Knowlton Hill Preserve

A Ton of Knowltons to Know
Knowlton Hill Preserve, Ashford & Mansfield
November 2025

This is a Joshua’s Trust property.

Before coming to this property to hike, I visited the Nathan Hale Heritage Museum at the June Norcross Scout Reservation. While there, I learned about Revolutionary War hero Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton, whose homestead was on camp property. That guy is perhaps Ashford’s most famous son, so I of course assumed that I’d be leaving his childhood home to drive over here to Knowlton Hill Road and the Knowlton Hill Preserve, bordered by Knowlton Pond (which, oddly enough, does not feed nor end Ashford’s Knowlton Brook) to hike some property that Lieutenant Knowlton had some connection to back in the day.

I parked in the hiker’s lot just south of the border with Mansfield and looked up at the beautiful house on the hill near the trailhead. This house and its surroundings, as described by Joshua’s Trust:

C.C. Knowlton, a wealthy mill owner, built his copper roofed summer home at the top of Knowlton Hill in the style of Watch Hill. His granddaughter, Mildred Hammond-Knowlton and her niece, Evelyn Guymon, gave this tract to the Trust. The most distinctive feature is the hill itself, from which one can see the Mt. Hope River valley and as far as Pumpkin Hill in Chaplin. Trails on both sides of Knowlton Hill Road wind through 127 acres of woods and fields past Knowlton Pond and then to the crest of a glacial drumlin, which affords a commanding view of the Mount Hope River valley and the pond.

Now, I think it’s safe to assume ol’ CC (etc.) above was a descendant of the Revolutionary hero, but I can’t guarantee that. (Okay, I think I can, but I won’t officially.)

Regardless of bloodlines, Mildred and Evelyn above are heroes just like their great great great great, great? grandfather/uncle for donating this beautiful property. The house was built as a summer home, patterned after the houses he had seen at Watch Hill in Rhode Island. The green roof is copper. C.C. Knowlton made his fortune from silk mills in this area and had another home in Brooklyn, New York and his granddaughter was quite the Ashford/Mansfield socialite back in the day. (The property straddles the town line, just as this hike does.)

I hike the 2.4 mile loop counter-clockwise, first heading east across the mowed field to a blazed stump and then down into the woods. According to the Trust, this hill is probably a glacial drumlin, a long smooth roll of clay accumulated and then passed over by the glacier. The small number of rock outcrops and the inverted spoon shape indicate that this is the geological origin. This field is kept mowed according to the conditions set by Miss Hammond-Knowlton. It provides important habitat for many animals which prefer open areas and edges of fields, such as woodchucks, or wild turkeys. It’s a very nice, open hillside.

Once into the woods, the trail splits a couple times; one split is an access trail out to the road, another follows a short orange-blazed loop down towards Knowlton Pond. I recommend you take in the little Orange Loop, as the pond is pretty. It also supposedly has some bog-like “floating islands” of sphagnum moss which is pretty neat.

Back up to the yellow trail and the splits, there’s a massive white oak. Apparently the Knowlton descendants used to picnic under this bad boy when there were no other trees around – which is why it was able to spread so much.

I didn’t notice it while walking, but there’s a large split road a little ways after the wolf tree and the bridge. It’s not the typical split rock, as this was apparently done by humans. You can see the shallow holes that were drilled for the purpose of splitting the boulder. The holes would have had wooden pegs driven into them and when the pegs absorbed water they swelled and split the rock. I’ve never heard of this before and I… wait, so the rock had to have a split in it already. So it’s not that cool.

But this trail is. I followed it back up the Knowlton Hill on the northern side of the Knowlton house, back towards the road. Knowlton Hill Road that is.

Once to the road, the trail follows it south for a little bit before heading off west into the woods again. The trail on this side of the road is flat and rockier than it is where I had just walked. A red-blazed loop extends the hike by a little bit and again, I recommend taking it. You get a nice little pond and a marsh and a cool naturally split boulder.

And you just feel better about yourself, knowing you experienced all that the Knowlton Hill Preserve has to offer: over 2 miles of varied typical southern New England terrain and several nice water features.

After reaching my car, I drove south towards Storrs and my word, approaching the UConn campus from this direction is the craziest way to get there. Tiny single lane curvy deep woods roads all the way to the back of Horsebarn Hill right by Route 195. It’s always surreal to me.

Joshua’s Trust
CTMQ hikes Joshua’s Trust’s Trails